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A review by analenegrace
Empire's Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper by Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez
challenging
dark
informative
Read for U.S. Empire with Dr. Jana Lipman at Tulane University in Fall '24.
This was a very interesting read that, in a way, I feel as if I didn't really learn much about Cooper at all. She is the person being written about, but yet I feel like I still don't really know her, which perhaps works well for what Gonzalez is telling us as readers: Filipina women of this time were sexualized, mistreated, mythicized, and fundamentally unknown.
Isabel Cooper is a woman who perhaps had agency in her life and perhaps did not. Gonzalez creates a lot of possible narrative action for her in an attempt to understand her choices and actions. Because we have such little information about her, even in this narrative attempting to separate her from men, her story is still framed around men because it is all we have.
This book allowed me to understand the Filipina experience a bit more during this period of U.S. colonization and the eventual freedom of the Philippines. It was a genuinely interesting and engaging read that left me with many more questions.
This was a very interesting read that, in a way, I feel as if I didn't really learn much about Cooper at all. She is the person being written about, but yet I feel like I still don't really know her, which perhaps works well for what Gonzalez is telling us as readers: Filipina women of this time were sexualized, mistreated, mythicized, and fundamentally unknown.
Isabel Cooper is a woman who perhaps had agency in her life and perhaps did not. Gonzalez creates a lot of possible narrative action for her in an attempt to understand her choices and actions. Because we have such little information about her, even in this narrative attempting to separate her from men, her story is still framed around men because it is all we have.
This book allowed me to understand the Filipina experience a bit more during this period of U.S. colonization and the eventual freedom of the Philippines. It was a genuinely interesting and engaging read that left me with many more questions.